Ordinary People Wear the Badges in Role Swap : Lawndale: Citizens wore badges. Deputies committed crimes. And by the end of the ‘Turnabout’ program, each side had gained understanding.

Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies and Lawndale residents reversed roles Thursday night in a playacting program called “Turnabout” that is designed to promote understanding for those on either side of the badge.

To put a little authority into their law enforcement roles, the citizens wore metal badges saying “safety is happiness” and used their fingers as imaginary guns. The deputies, though on duty during the program, wore regular street clothing.

The program is the brainchild of Lt. Charles Jackson, who staged his first show 15 years ago when he worked at the Firestone station. After a hiatus of more than a decade, he decided two months ago to resurrect the program as part of the department’s effort to “be more in tune to the needs of the community we serve rather than what we assume the community wants,” Jackson said.

“With what the public sees on TV, a lot of times they think every cop out there is (the television cop) Hunter--running around doing whatever you want, there’s no checks and balances, you can break the law whenever you want to,” Jackson said. “But that’s not true. What we want to show is the true image of law enforcement.”

Thursday’s show, which was sponsored by the Lawndale Neighborhood Watch and staged before an audience of about 60 people in the city’s Civic Center, was only the second time the program had played since the mid-1970s. Another show is planned after the first of the year, and Jackson hopes the idea will eventually spread to other sheriff’s stations.

Assistant Sheriff Jerry Harper said the department brass is still evaluating the cost-efficiency of the program, but the “feedback we’ve gotten so far has been exceptionally good from both the officers involved and the citizens.”

Jackson, who was given leave from his post at the inmate reception center in downtown Los Angeles to direct the program, kicked off the show by instructing both deputies and citizens to act in the way they believed the other side would act in real-life situations.

Jesse Palacios, 30, and Carmen Wong, who gave her age only as “senior citizen,” quickly volunteered to be the officers for the first scenario, which Jackson described as a “typical disturbance call.”

Relishing the chance to wear a badge but unsatisfied with his imaginary gun, Palacios quipped, “Where’s my stick?”

Jackson then set the scene: It’s late at night and an anonymous caller reports that two men are fighting and disturbing their neighbors.

The “suspects,” deputies Steven Tenney and Merrill Ladenheim, are shouting at each other so loudly that it takes Palacios and Wong a few minutes to figure out that the two men are supposed to be brothers. One is accusing the other of taking his car without asking.

Palacios, a large man with a mustache, tries to separate the two. He uses his palm to push against Tenney’s chest in an attempt to break up the fight.

The pushing appears to antagonize Tenney, who screams: “What do you want? Why do you want my name? You have no right to be in my house.”

Palacios is undeterred. “Someone is going to have to go to jail, it’s as simple as that,” he declares.

Jackson, who has been watching the show with amusement, suddenly steps into the scene. He explains to the citizen-cops that they need a victim in order to have a crime and that in real life they would have no grounds to arrest the brothers.

Addressing the way Palacios pushed against Tenney, Jackson asks the audience: “How many of us would have stood for that pushing around? There’s a lot of things you think we can do, like pushing, that we really can’t.”

In the next scene, Deputy Stacy Lee plays an 85-year-old woman who has run a red light on her way home from the bridge club. She is so frightened of police officers that she refuses to roll down her window.

After finding out her name, citizen-cop Chuck Hartman, 34, finally decides to let the woman go home, but he vows to send out a social worker the next morning to evaluate her driving abilities.

Jackson is happily surprised at Hartman’s solution. In past sessions, citizen role players have broken the window, dragged the old woman out of the car and had her car towed away.

“I’d like to congratulate these guys for having the common sense to know . . . that sometimes it’s best to walk away and let her go,” he said. “It shows how highly you regard deputies in our department.”

Four more scenes follow. Although some are dead serious, others are sprinkled with humor, like the one when “suspect” Glen Mayer taunts a citizen-cop, “Have you had your coffee and doughnuts yet?”

In one scene, neighbors have complained about a suspicious-looking man who has been walking around the neighborhood late at night. In another, a carload of aggressive men, who may have been drinking, are stopped for a traffic violation. In yet another scene, a passenger in a car that has been stopped for having a broken taillight accuses police of harassing him because he is black.

By the end of the evening, Palacios, the citizen-cop who pushed the deputy-suspect in the first scenario, had gained a different view of what it is like to be in a deputy’s shoes.

“I learned a big lesson tonight,” he told deputies and fellow residents, “that the respect you give to a person is what you would hope you will get back.”

Elizabeth Klemick, who played a deputy in another scenario, said: “I really felt what they felt tonight. I can understand now what you must feel like when we’re yelling at you guys to do something.”

A few deputies expressed appreciation for the depth of understanding shown by most of the residents, but none of them revealed what they had learned from the evening’s program. Noting that deputies aren’t used to revealing their thoughts to the public, Jackson said they are usually willing to admit only in private just what they got out of the experience.

“The last time we did this, a couple (of deputies) said they were not aware that the community viewed them in such a violent, reactionary way,” Jackson said. “Others said they liked having a chance to show the citizens how they felt about how the citizens sometimes act.”